Here’s the minimum wage Trump...

Here’s the minimum wage Trump won’t like

We really shouldn’t be all that astonished that Donald Trump is “walking back” his announced plan – the one he campaigned and presumably won the nomination on – to deport 11 million illegal immigrants. He has done the same with everything else. He has held opposing positions on nearly every important issue before the American people. And his camp loves it.

But really, is mass deportation the ultimate fix anyway? Is a physical wall, like the Great Wall of China or Hadrian’s Wall or the Maginot Line, the final answer in 2016? This kind of thinking really belongs to an earlier era where political decisions alone are not the incentive for illegal immigration.

The factor which would stop illegal immigration dead in its tracks and have the illegals going back home in droves is simple: disincentivizing them. It is virtually cost free to law-abiding citizens. We don’t need to impose eminent domain on property owners to build walls, we don’t have to burn fossil fuels to carry materials to the border, nor hire workers to build it. We don’t need to assemble a fleet to drive unwilling illegal immigrants back to Europe or Asia or the Middle East or Africa. Think of the cost of that, after they are all found and rounded up!

What we need to do is to end all welfare and services for people who are here illegally. We must, of course, exempt things like emergency medical care, but no more welfare charge cards, no more subsidized housing or employment, no more free education or healthcare. We can do this almost without cost. It might involve a bit of court cost, but nothing like the wall and deportation options, which in Trump’s case were just hooey anyway.

Why isn’t Trump exploring this option? Well it would have to involve penalties – and very, very stiff ones – for those who hire illegal immigrants. This is easily done. I have worked for companies which observed the legal hiring protocol. In fact, due to delays in St. Paul where they installed a new computer system, my ID was delayed for months, despite my intensive follow-up. I finally had to apply all over again because my application was “lost.” The result? My employer held up my paychecks until they got the actual card – not a receipt that I was going to get one, mind you – the card itself. Now, I was born on American soil. Many of my ancestors were here in the 17th Century. Some fought in the Revolutionary War (and on the right side, too). But still, as Christmas came and went, no paycheck.

We can hold employers to a very high standard of observance of immigration law if we want to. Trouble is, the Democrat candidate and her whole party benefit from illegals’ presence here, and also voter fraud. Just add them together. The Republican candidate knows he is vulnerable on this issue, so he is not going to pursue it either. In fact he doesn’t even care about voter fraud because he is effectively throwing the election anyway. He likes Hillary. Don’t let him fool you.

No, Trump can’t take the legal road because he has made too much profit on the illegal side. His Trump Tower was built on land cleared by 200 Polish illegal immigrants. Why does he like them to work for him? Because as illegals they live in the shadows of society. He doesn’t have to (and did not, in fact) pay them a minimum wage, or contribute to their Social Security accounts. He didn’t need to worry about OSHA oversight, about labor unions, or about exceeding the normal working hours. He demanded 14-hour days, 7 days per week at $5/hour. He couldn’t do that if he hired legal workers. He currently uses, and intends to continue using, illegal workers under inhumane conditions well into the future because it’s good for his bottom line. Trump has nothing to fear because he holds their illegal status over them – a kind of unspoken blackmail. They understand. And that’s what he’s all about; being immensely successful (“winning”). And he has been winning, if you discount the contest with Hillary which is a phony one.

What we need to do is be humane, allow these people to go home, return again the legal route if they wish, and punish severely those who prey upon them for personal gain. It is not enough to allow them to settle court cases or to pay fines and restitution. What is needed is jail time. Hiring illegal aliens to take jobs in America needs to end with the employer wearing an orange jumpsuit. The reason is simple: people who have been doing this illegal hiring (and there are many, not just Trump, of course) have enough money that this is not a disincentive. They have it because they have been skimming in this way for years and years. It is worth a fine in the event they get caught or someone blows a whistle. They can pay hush money through a high-priced attorney’s services. At least until the money runs out.

It might have run out for Trump. Otherwise, he probably would have settled his claim with his “students” at Trump U. But he has been riding very high and intends to keep doing what got him there. If, however, hiring illegals and being found guilty of avoiding or breaking US law resulted in a few years of prison time, we could make serious inroads into this problem that is choking our economy and our society. He has always said he doesn’t want to deport the “good” ones.

The “rapists” would go home and become a burden on their own communities if they could not get benefits here, and if they were denied employment. Illegals should be deported on a case-by-case basis when we catch up with them, but we don’t need a wall, we don’t need a fleet of troop ships to get rid of them. They are smart enough to go where there is incentive for them to go, not where they will find unemployment, lack of services and welfare benefits; where they cannot come and give birth and we will falsely recognize the child as an American citizen. And why are we talking about building a wall while we are talking about amnesty? Where is the logic here?

There is also an alternate way. Make the legal minimum wage for an illegal alien worker at least $50.00/hour. Any infraction of this minimum wage would be punishable by a jail sentence for the employer, plus restitution of all unpaid wages retroactive to the date of hiring. You can figure the rest out yourself. If the worker is truly worth the price – no problem. But if someone attempts to hire a nanny or a gardener at less than $50.00/hour, their recourse if not paid that amount would be to go to the county sheriff and file charges. The employer would then be hauled into court and likely into jail. We could forget all about deportation.

We won’t see Trump supporting anything as sensible as this for a couple of reasons: he doesn’t care about the problems it causes, just the attention he can garner from those who suffer from the problem. And he doesn’t want to give up his ride on the illegal employee gravy train. He is the problem, not the solution. What he has been doing times thousands is what is bringing these unfortunates to our shores.

Once we clean up this mess – and it will take another election cycle now – we can stop importing fake “refugees” en masse. We need not stop being humanitarians. We can help truly needy people in various ways through relief efforts that keep them in their homelands, for one, and standing up for them rather than allowing hoods and felons to overrun them. We could stop supporting such activities as the “Arab Spring”, which ushered in a whole new era of terrorism.

We can end this invasion of illegals and other undesirable immigrants (such as terrorists posing as refugees who enter legally and those who come and overstay their visas) by deporting the individuals as they are caught and requiring extensive jail sentences for repeat offenders; by acting in such a way as to discourage the situations which bring them here; by refusing to bring people in on any but a case-by-case basis; by firing Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Relief and taking them off our books for good; by ending all welfare programs for non-American citizens; and by locking up in dank prisons those high-flyers who have been employing them.

I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to seeing Trump making license plates for a while. Make America great again.

Sally Morris is a political commentator and writer for The New Americana and the Dakota Beacon.
Raised in a very conservative environment where politics were the common topic of discussion at home, she began early to develop critical thinking skills and follow political news and events. At 15 she was drawn to her local Republican headquarters where her typing skills were put to work preparing canvass sheets, poll sheets, maintaining files. She was precinct committeeman in her state district and chaired two committees in a state Republican Convention. The deterioration of Republican Party principles has been a concern throughout her years as a Republican. In 2009 she organized the first tea party event in her city, which spawned a core group of activists. Today Ms Morris defines herself as a “constitutional conservative independent”.
She has also written for newspapers under the names “Kathleen McCarty” and “Ellen Jones.”
As a property owner she took on the city council’s plan to destroy her historic neighborhood and subsequently authored the first successful nomination to the National Register of Historic Places of a linear resource (Granitoid Pavement) for its engineering and design. It was also placed on the State Registry (North Dakota). She has also seen first-hand the corruption of the eminent domain principle when her Minnesota home was seized for development of a project which never, in fact, materialized, although the home was demolished. This experience brought into sharp focus eminent domain abuse as well as other corrupt practices in local government. (Another reason why she opposes Donald Trump and Haley Barbour).
A devotee and performer on Celtic Harp she has also presented discussions on topics of Irish history and music at the Fargo/Moorhead Celtic Festival. She and her late husband, Clyde Morris, homeschooled their three children, now grown and also published authors and musicians.